This study explores how school policies influence the environmental impacts of school commutes, motivated by increased interest in school choice policies and in reducing bus services to address recent budget shortfalls.

Results indicate that eliminating district-wide school choice (i.e., returning to a system with neighborhood schools only) would have significant impacts on transport modes and emissions, whereas in many cases proposed shifts in school choice and bus-provision policies would have only modest impacts.

Policies such as school choice and school siting may conflict with the goal of increasing rates of active (i.e., nonmotorized) school commuting.

Researchers report that these findings underscore the need to critically evaluate transportation-related environmental and health impacts of currently proposed changes in school policy.

This research brief presents an overview of findings demonstrating the potential impact of infrastructure investments and other transportation programs on walking and bicycling for transportation, and on related health outcomes.

It also focuses on public transit, greenways and trails, school-related infrastructure and programs, pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and efforts to manage car traffic.

This study investigates the characteristics of student travel behaviors before the implementation of SRTS program and identifies the influential factors affecting the number of children to walk or bike to school.

Parents reported the following as the five primary factors affecting children’s walking or biking:

distance (67.0%)

traffic speed along route (53.7%)

traffic amount along route (51.3%)

violence or crime (42.1%)

intersection safety (38.2%)

Parents reported the following as the five primary factors that would change their decisions and allow their children to walk or bike to school:

distance (25.5%)

safety of intersections and crossings (22.0%)

weather or climate (21.9%)

presence of an adult cowalker (17.5%)

convenience of driving (15.0%)

Researchers suggest that distance between the rankings reveal a variance between people’s perceptions and reactions.

Subjective opinions were also considered in this study demonstrating that most students and parents held positive attitudes toward students walking or biking to school:

Forty percent of students consider walking or biking to school “fun” or “very fun” and less than 10 percent of students consider it “boring or “very boring”.

57.2 percent of students consider it “healthy” or “very healthy” to walk or bike to school.

78.8 percent of students have asked for permission to walk or bike to school.

Only 4.1 percent of students believed their schools discourage or strongly discourage students to walk or bike to school.

32.9 percent of parents will allow their children to walk or bike alone at different grades.

This study analyzes rates of walking and biking to school among low-income and minority youth in the United States.

Hispanics have the highest rate of active transportation (27.7%) while whites have the lowest (9.4%).

Results demonstrate that families earning less than $20,000 walk more than twice as much as students from households earning more than $60,000.

High school students have the lowest rates of active transport across all income and racial groups.

Living within a half-mile of school greatly increases the likely of walking or biking to school.

A significant implication of these findings is that Safe Routes to School programs have the potential to benefit minority and low-income students, especially because many of those students are more likely to live near the school they attend.

McDonald, Noreen C. “Critical Factors for Active Transportation to School Among Low-Income and Minority Students. Evidence from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 34.4 (2008): 341-344.

In 1969, 40.7% of students walked or biked to school, by 2001 only 12.9% of children walked or biked to school.

This study documents the sharp decrease in Active Transportation to School (ATS) from 1960 to 2001 as well as an increase distance to school. A decrease in walking represents an important loss of everyday physical activity for students.

This article suggests that policies affecting this distance, such as school siting, should begin to explicitly consider access to schools in planning decisions. Public officials should also continue to support programs such as Safe Routes to School that address safety concerns.

The purpose of this report is to evaluate the effectiveness of the SRTS program in reducing crashes, injuries and fatalities involving children in the vicinity of the projects, the impact of the program on levels of walking and bicycling to school, and the safety benefits of the program in comparison with other highway safety programs.

Evaluation results report an increase in walking and bicycling to and from school from 10%-200% depending on the source of information (direct observation vs. parent estimates).

California reports an overall decline in the number of child pedestrians/bicyclists injured in Safe Routes to School program areas.

SRTS projects saw a similar decline in the actual numbers of child pedestrian/bicyclist injuries as the control areas and across California. However, when factoring in the increase in walking and bicycling in the SRTS projects and increased exposure to risk, the SRTS program showed a decreased rate of injuries and a net benefit in terms of safety for affected students. The magnitude of the safety benefit ranged from 0 to 49% depending on the increase in the walking/bicycling rate.

Cost-benefit comparisons performed by Caltrans resulted in a cost per collision reduction ranging between $40,397 and $282,779.

Improvements in traffic congestion and air quality near school are also considered beneficial but difficult to include in a cost-benefit evaluation.

A vigorous enforcement program was established in Fresno, California. Data on citations, collisions, fatal collisions, and fatalities related to speed, as well as injury severity from the trauma registry, were collected for the year before program onset (2002), during the first year (2003), and after full implementation (2004).

This article focuses on the relationship between the built environment, travel behavior, and public health outcomes.

Frank, Lawrence D. and Engelke, Peter. “Multiple Impacts of the Built Environment on Public Health: Walkable Places and the Exposure to Air Pollution.” International Regional Science Review. 28(2) (2005): 193-216.

This study examines the association between traffic-related pollution and childhood asthma among 208 children in 10 communities in Southern California.

Results demonstrate an association between increased asthma and closer residential distance to a freeway, indicating that respiratory health in children is adversely affected by local exposures to outdoor Nitrogen Dioxide or other freeway-related pollutants.

The implications of these data are important and relevant because they strengthen emerging evidence that air pollution can cause asthma and that traffic-related pollutants are partly responsible for this association.

This study examines trends in walking among U.S. adults and youth for a Healthy People 2010 objective that calls for increased walking of trips 1 mile or less (25% increase for adults and 50% increase for youth).

By tracking and analyzing national transportation surveys, results demonstrate adults reported more walking in 2001 (21.2%) than in 1995 (16.6%).

In 2001, only about one third (35.9%) of children aged 5 to 15 traveled 1 mile or less to school, and of these, 36% traveled by walking. This study reports that trips in 1995 only 31.3% of these children walked to school.

Despite increases in walking trends, adults and youth still do not meet objectives for Healthy People 2010.

This review of the success of the Safe Routes to School program in Marin County reports an increase in walking and biking to school.

Student transportation surveys reported a 64% increase in the number of children walking to school, 114% increase in the number of students biking, and 91% increase in the number of students carpooling.

This review uses the Transportation Research Information Services database to identify studies on engineering to reduce speed, separate pedestrians from vehicles, and increase visibility of pedestrians.

This study aims to estimate the likely effect of reduced travel speeds on the incidence of pedestrian fatalities in Adelaide, Australia.

A scenario in which the speed was reduced from 60 to 50 km/hr suggests a 32% reduction in fatalities and 10% of fatal accidents being avoided altogether.

The results of the study predict that a small reduction in traveling speed is likely to result in large reductions of impact speed in pedestrian collisions, often to the extent of collision prevention.